Guilt
by sarakirai
Summary: She shows up at his apartment the night of his twenty-fifth birthday. [future fic, past relationships]
1. not-so-first meetings

**Guilt**

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**Chapter 1: not-so-first meetings**

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><p>

**[chapter summary]**

She shows up at his apartment the night of his twenty-fifth birthday.

**[notes]**

was just weeding this out of my laptop tbh the incomplete fic folder was getting a little crowded OTL

/now continued/

seo and waka, ten years on.

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She shows up at his apartment the night of his twenty-fifth birthday.

Wakamatsu's still in his work attire, and is pottering about in the kitchen while replying to all the birthday emails he's gotten from friends and family, when the doorbell rings. He hasn't the foggiest idea who it could be, visiting at this time of night. Probably just some pizza deliveryman who's stopped at the wrong unit, he thinks, opening the door with face schooled into an expression of polite rejection.

But the person at the door isn't some lost pizza deliveryman – it's _Seo_.

Seo-senpai.

Seo Yuzuki.

Wakamatsu blinks, blue eyes wide.

"Hey," she says, and her voice is so deadpan and casually rude and so perfectly the same as it was in high school that he feels like crying. "I'm here to sing you a birthday song."

"…Hirotaka."

He smiles wanly and lets her in, watches as she kicks her shoes off and they fall over messily next to his neatly aligned footwear, habitually stoops to shuffle them into order as well.

"Thanks for showing up," he nods carefully at her, "though this _is_ rather a surprise…Yuzuki."

"I haven't sung for you since you graduated from high school, haven't I?" she remarks conversationally, as she rolls up the sleeves of her white shirt; his eyes travel down the seam of the pencil skirt she wears. The hem stops two inches above her knees. He'd done the same thing then, when she came over to say her farewells and give him a congratulatory pat on the head; he'd stooped to let her reach up and tousle his hair, had used that as an excuse not to look at her face directly, had trailed his eyes down the beautiful curve of her legs.

He'd actually been in a fairly good mood, because Nozaki-senpai had handed him a copy of Lorelei's latest song – one that she hadn't released online yet, even though she was getting increasingly popular as a net idol in the past two years, the two years she'd spent in college. He'd been honoured and flattered and excitedly confused, and then he'd gone and ruined everything.

This time, his eyes trace the outline of her legs as they did before, but then they're being drawn back up, as if irresistibly, towards her shoulders, her neck, her face. He panics internally, fixes his gaze on the light switch, an unopened utility bill, anything. Anything but her face, and the guilt that surfaces when she fills his vision or his thoughts. It always bubbles up gently, making it so that he has no right time to notice and clamp down on those rogue feelings.

They study each other in overtly covert fashion – sidelong glances and affected indifference are the only thing they've allowed themselves after everything went to shit. That rule still holds, even though it was years and years ago that everything went to shit. Because first cuts are the deepest after all, aren't they? Though it's been a long time since he graduated.

_Since he graduated and then found out she was Lorelei, and threw a ginormous hissy fit_, they both know, but they're not going to talk about it. They don't want to. No tonight, at least. She glances past him, and he remembers he has a question to answer.

"Yeah, you haven't," he agrees, and can't stop himself from tacking on the next part. It must be the wine talking, he thinks, as he watches himself shape his lips to his next words. "I missed it. I missed _you_."

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She swivels to pin him with her amber gaze, and he swallows, hard.

He lets her punch him in the chest, no holds barred.

She lets him wrap his arms around her tightly from behind.

And those gestures, they hope, will be more than enough to convey everything that they couldn't say, and still can't.

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**[notes]**

Originally written as an omake for another of my one-shots, but it got kinda off track so I made it a stand-alone chapter. Older character AU dramas - who doesn't love them? (well, not me) Now continued, after minimal encouragement from anonymous AO3 commenters xoxo

You guys please talk to me too HEY


	2. wrestling between the sheets

**Guilt**

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**Chapter 2: wrestling between the sheets (with your emotions)**

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><p>

**[chapter summary]**

He blinks. That's right. He's twenty-five years old and waking up in the morning is nothing new, but waking up in the morning with a warm body next to him in bed – now, that's something.

**[notes]**

yay installment two is up please drown in angst together with them

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He groans and buries his face into the pillow when he realises that he's only half-clothed, slacks riding low on his hips now that his belt is cast off somewhere in the room, his shirt gone along with it. He stares dumbly at the rumpled crease of the navy material, then rolls to sit upright with an effort so he can start looking for the rest of his uniform. It's comfortably warm between the sheets, which drape over his frame thinly yet somehow manage to provide protection from the fading chill of morning. _Shirt_, he thinks; _shirt, tie, vest; blue for third year_. Not green, not red, blue. Wakamatsu leans over to the other side of the bed to see if they're chucked down there, and his elbow connects with soft flesh instead of the cool cotton and wood he was expecting. He blinks. He's eighteen years old and waking up in the morning is nothing new, but waking up in the morning with a warm body next to him in bed – now, that's something.

He reaches out to pull the sheets back with tentative fingers, and loses all the breath he was holding in the moment he does. God, being in close proximity with a woman takes all his breath away. He's still bent over her sleeping form, and he can feel the heat of her skin through the sheets, almost surprised that the erratic pounding in his chest hasn't woken her yet, it's so goddamn loud. Then her eyes flicker open to lock with his, and he notices with a start that their faces are only inches away from each other. _When did he - how could he have - ?_

He blinks. That's right. He's twenty-five years old and waking up in the morning is nothing new, but waking up in the morning with a warm body next to him in bed – now, that's something.

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Wakamatsu scrambles to get off Seo, folding himself back into his half of the mattress with alacrity. He sits there, back to her, all tightly folded long limbs and tousled hair and flushed cheeks, and she rolls off her side to prop an elbow beneath herself. He looks ridiculous, like he's a little kid again, afraid of hurting her once more with his words, with his actions, the immaturity of a teenage mind. He doesn't need to worry about that any more, though. Now he's an adult, they're both adults. They just happen to be two adults who spent the night in the same bed and didn't do any adult things – that thought makes her smile wanly. Stuck in the past, they are.

She's got his shirt on, she realises, his shirt is the only thing she's wearing. It hangs off her shoulders loosely, unbuttoned as it is, pooling around her hips when she crosses her legs over the mattress. It's nice to lean against the broad expanse of his back, with all its ridges and dips, makes the perfect resting spot for her.

The first touch is tentative, though, with her gingerly laying her right cheek against the curve of his spine, body tensed and ready to withdraw should he show any sign of disgust at the bodily contact, small as it is. He can feel it, she knows, can feel the heat she emanates ghosting over his skin, inching closer and closer. He can feel the tickle of a strand of her hair, he is painfully aware of the tempo of her breaths. She would know, because she is, too. Sensitive bundle of nerves, she is. When did she ever become the type of person who'd _hover_ around someone else, instead of just going right ahead and telling them to deal? Huh?

Anyway, he lets her lean on him, savours the feel of her temple as she idly rubs it against the blades of his shoulders. They haven't once touched like this, he's sure, because in the past it was all slaps on the back or a basketball to the face and being lugged to the infirmary or being pulled around by his tie. This is a conscious display of affection, and it is less novel than it should be, though. Sinking into each other is good, but sinking into memories of the past is something to be avoided (yet something that can't be avoided).

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You know when you're eighteen the world is spread out in front of you and everyone's telling you that what's waiting for you out there is a golden future. You've got your whole life ahead of you, they say. But they don't factor in things like running into old upperclassmen at your graduation ceremony, or finding out through someone else's slip of the tongue that the anonymous girl you've always idolised and put on the highest fucking pedestal on earth is, in actuality, someone you've always claimed to detest right down to the roots of her very being. They don't factor in the power of your youthful insensitivity in times of great mental stress, even though you're normally the epitome of conscientiously polite; or the possibility of a total meltdown occurring in public, histrionics at their best.

Bright amber eyes deaden in front of you but you don't notice because you're too busy trying to keep your shit together – and then you both snap. Your ipod ends up at the bottom of the city square fountain, along with your trust in the world, and the shine off her knuckles in a tightly clenched fist is as searing white as the guilt that stains you in that moment, a bright swathe that obstructs your vision so you don't have to watch her walking away and think about how you might have hurt her. But when you're done wallowing in your own perceptions of pain, then you can sit down alone in your room and say that you never meant to hurt her.

She doesn't pick up your calls, and every time that happens you recall screaming something incoherent about betrayal and think that to the rest of your friends, it must feel a lot like you're the one who's in the wrong.

You had no idea before that guilt could be nursed for so long, could be carried around for more than half a decade, a precious companion that you're now reluctant to let go. It's a part of you; it's grown, and grown with you. Letting go will be tough. Divesting guilt from your everyday thought process will be like levering barnacles off a rock, and it's going to be a long and painful undertaking before you'll be able to stop berating yourself for being happy around her, for being happy at the smallest signs from the universe that she's willing to give you a second chance. You're going to have to stop telling yourself that you don't deserve to be content with your life; though you have no idea how.

But you'll do it for those amber eyes.

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They listen to the sound of his heartbeat together, muffled thudding through walls of flesh and bone and blood.

"It's not even _seven_," Seo yawns, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and lolling further back against his solid warmth; the crown of her head barely reaching the base of his neck. "How do you even wake up so fucking early?"

Wakamatsu looks at her for a long, long minute. Then he turns to nuzzle the crook of her shoulder and simply replies that, in any case, he wouldn't have let her be late for work.

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**[notes]**

...and to think I was seriously considering going the cliche route and having them wake up naked in bed LOL


	3. how (not) to be surreptitious

**Guilt**

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**Chapter 3: how (not) to be surreptitious**

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**[chapter summary]**

He calls her during lunch break the very same day.

It's as if, after having her completely out of his life for the past seven years, he suddenly can't get through the everyday monotony without seeing her face or hearing her voice, feeling the comfortable weight of his phone buzzing in his pocket with an email from her.

**[notes]**

Well, here's chapter 3. I've also managed to do an outline of the plot for the whole fic, with 10 chapters planned, so you can gimme a pat on the back (or better yet, kudos and comments).

Hope all you readers like where it's going!

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He calls her during lunch break the very same day.

It's as if, after having her completely out of his life for the past seven years, he suddenly can't get through the everyday monotony without seeing her face or hearing her voice, feeling the comfortable weight of his phone buzzing in his pocket with an email from her. As he wraps up the last of his morning's work and tidies his desk space before slipping out of the building, he pedals his foot anxiously against the legs of his office chair, waiting for her to pick up the call. She doesn't, and for a brief moment he's plunged back into the past again, to days after that awful confrontation where he'd spend all his time commuting to university entrance examinations and staring mournfully at his call log on the train, while walking, during meals.

When they were still on fairly good terms he'd always dreaded the sight of message alerts that bore her name. Those were invitations to dinner, to movie premieres, to the newest beach attraction; to her heart. She'd liked spending time with him, and he hadn't liked spending time with her, but they'd spent lots of time together, anyway – because he never betrayed any discontent string enough to rattle her, and she, safe in her imperviousness, never betrayed any inkling of awareness about that.

The phone continues to vibrate, his offer and his breath on hold. He walks into the confines of the lift, exchanges pleasantries with co-workers, and politely shrugs off their offers of lunch together with a smile. As the doors slide closed and the lift begins its descent, Wakamatsu's mind is brought back to when he was sharing a lift with someone else, just this morning. Seo standing in the same small space as he was, just far away enough for him to be able to breathe without any hitches, and close enough for him to recall the tantalising heat she'd emitted in bed, warming him through the sheets.

He hadn't quite been able to look her in the face – not because they just shared a bed – but because she was wearing one of his shirts, actually wearing one of his shirts over yesterday's skirt and stockings. While he was showering (he's insisted she go in first) she'd decided that her shirt was too wrinkled and padded over to his closet to pull out one of his. He'd emerged from the bathroom with a towel round his waist to find her buttoning up his pale blue long-sleeved in the mirror, cinched at the hip with one of his belts and showing off her eyes very nicely, when coupled with the spare jewellery she'd pulled out of her bag. It'd knocked the breath out of him like one of her punches to the gut, but any gaping had been cut short due to his half-naked state.

Seo had been a real vision, and before realising it Wakamatsu stilled the hand that had been about to grab a white shirt and went for a navy one instead – "it matches your eyes," she'd said in passing when he'd dressed; and he had wanted nothing more than to reply "it matches your outfit". Looking at her directly henceforth without blushing was an impossible endeavour, but a whole morning has passed by now. He's ready to try again.

She finally answers just as the lift reaches the ground floor and opens, disgorging a miniature flood of other office workers. Wakamatsu smiles at the person keeping the doors open and tries not to put too much bounce into his steps as he walks.

"Seo," he breathes in relief. "Well? Can we meet?"

There's a brief silence that indicates she's currently chewing on the inside of her lip.

"By the fountain," she finally mutters, "the one out front by that mall."

When he earnestly assures her he'll be there, she snaps that there was no need to leave her eleven missed calls.

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Seo's already there when he gets the fountain into his sights, perched on the edge of the basin with a bored look on her face and two neatly wrapped bento by her side. _From her colleagues_, she says by way of explanation when he furrows his brow at them. There follows an awkward lull where he simply stands there in front of her and drinks the sight of her in as she slouches in the sunlight, messy bun and all.

She rolls her eyes at him ("sit _down_, you dork") and he gingerly folds his lanky frame into the space next to her, accepts one of the packets of food with tentative thanks. Then of course he gets all distracted again, for example by the way the afternoon sunlight plays on her hair and shades the plane of her face, or by the way she crosses her shapely legs, causing her skirt to ride up a little. What is most distracting is the way his shirt hangs off her shoulders and gently hugs her curves, how naturally his belt sits on her hips, the way strands of hair fall loose over her nape.

The breeze dallies with their hair, and before he can stop himself, he's reached out to tuck a flyaway lock behind her ear. The tips of his fingers brush over her temple as he does so, and he hopes that he doesn't have some puppy dog look on his stupid face when she turns her head to eyeball him. Wakamatsu audibly gulps and immediately ducks his head, determined to fully concentrate on eating, since he was the one who requested that they eat together in the first place. He shovels the rice into his mouth along with snippets of the side dishes, cheeks comically pouched when he looks up at the sound of her sighing. He hastens to chew and swallow, and she socks in the thigh for the heck of it when he almost chokes.

Sitting by a fountain with Seo Yuzuki is something Wakamatsu didn't think he ever would do (and, later, that he'd ever get to do). He sneaks glances at her in his peripheral vision, soaks in the novel fullness that it gives him to be doing this. At the rate he's been going through his food, he thinks he'll finish faster than her, even though he wasted long, long minutes feasting on her instead. And he does. She turns to scrutinise him baldly when he snaps his disposable chopsticks in half and wipes his mouth with a napkin.

"Seo," he says, ignoring the weary sigh she sends his way, "can I redo your hair?"

Her lips curl. "And here I thought you only wanted to have lunch with me."

Tacit permission is given, however, when she angles her seat a little away from him so he's nearer to her nape. He draws one leg up and tucks it securely between their bodies, pressed up against the curve of her butt on the smooth tiling of the fountain ledge. This position gives him leeway to sit sideways, and facing her back completely – if he were to wrap strong arms round her waist and pull, she'd be pressed flush against his chest (thank goodness her back is to him, really, seeing as he flushes so much it has to be unhealthy). Her hair tumbles down over his hands when he tugs the elastic band off, and he takes a moment to rake through her tresses on the pretext on removing tangles and knots. Braiding the hair at the crown is a nice excuse to lean in and subtly inhale, gathering her locks means he can brush hands over her shoulders and the planes of her cheekbones. Securing her mass of curls into and up-do is legitimate reason to tease loose strands out and let them fall over the shell of her ear.

He's very sorry when it's all over, but also very smug.

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Later that night Wakamatsu goes to the DVD rental place nearest to his flat and hunts down every single crappy film Seo ever made him watch with her. It's the start of a ridiculous period of self-indulgent idiocy, because he actually lists all these film titles down, arranges them according to the chronological order in which they were viewed, and allocates one to every weekday night and three to every weekend one. _What the fuck is he doing with his life, you ask? News flash: he doesn't know either. _

As he sits through the first of these many B-grade sci-fi flicks to come, Wakamatsu finds that he really can't stop from cringing a little. Trying to relive old memories like this is really so unlike him, the only thing he's done in honour of Seo's memory is really to abstain from getting a replacement music player – and even then it's a rather empty gesture because with her out of basketball practice the insomnia gradually receded into nothingness; besides, it's more for himself that he doesn't listen to music anymore, it's too strongly associated with bitter recollections about the tragic end to a thwarted first love (cockblocking yourself, now _that's_ new). It isn't any use trying to watch the film from Seo's perspective, because Wakamatsu still gets sucked into the emotive plotline eventually no matter how enthralling the alien, and ends up crying rivers at the death of the heroine's ex-classmate's uncle's son-in-law's cousin's cat, alone on the sofa with his hands in his lap.

He flops down on the cushions and lets his glazed eyes take a bit of a rest, throwing an arm over his face and stretching out. He's warm and comfortable, if a bit stiff-necked, and he snuggles further into the sofa – thinks back to the time they'd seen this movie in the theatre, where Seo had dozed off on his shoulder, warm discomfiting weight on his side; then slid down to lay her head practically in his lap. Wakamatsu wonders what it'd be like to lay his head in her lap. The closest he's come to doing that are all the times when she happens to force him into a headlock and then spontaneously decides to sit down, in which case he'll be bent forward so much that he could have nestled into her stomach, if not for the fact that he was always trying to get free.

The irony of it all doesn't escape him.

It also doesn't escape him that what they are now is nothing like what they used to be. Not that they're somewhere better, or somewhere worse – just somewhere different. It shows in their tell-tale way of addressing each other: no more "Waka" and no more "Seo-senpai". Even yesterday was an exception, because when you reunite with someone you once held a candle for (and truthfully, still do, though that's _terrifying_) after seven years, you can't tell what's going to happen next and you may never see them again, so you end up going with the fucking flow and using first names, no honorifics. At least, that's what Wakamatsu thinks is the reason why Seo had called him "Hirotaka". It sure as hell is the reason why he'd addressed her as "Yuzuki" in turn.

Still, there's a strange sense of intimacy with the way things are now; the way they shape their voice to run over the syllables of a name; an odd sort of caress inherent in their tone – a name become a precious thing, one that they didn't think to treasure before. But maybe it's all in his imagination. Even so, he's glad that his name has four syllables, four syllables that she has to wrap her tongue around; time for him to savour the texture of her voice as it washes over his ears.

Wakamatsu sighs, switches the DVD player off, and heads to bed – he has to wake up at six-thirty tomorrow. It's the same for the weeks that follow, stumbling into his bedroom at midnight with his head full of nostalgically junked memories and crawling out in the early morning with fading dreams of soft female warmth. He waits until the very last movie they watched together has been thoroughly perused by his very tired eyes before steeling himself for another face-to-face encounter; all this has acted as buffer time too, so she wouldn't sound so ticked off and unwilling to see his face and he wouldn't have to call her twelve times to get her to pick up the line.

And he's right, you know, Wakamatsu is. This time when he calls her to beg an extended audience (read: a date) she answers on only the fifth call he places.

There's a beat of silence after he makes his request. "Then, next Friday night," she says challengingly, "we're going out drinking."

_Challenge accepted._

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**[notes]**

So yes please look forward to chapter 4 *aggressive winking*

You can drop ideas, but I won't be revising my outline too radically anymore. Feel free to leave a review though! I'd be happy to chat.


	4. tipping back, tipping over

**Guilt**

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**Chapter 4: tipping back, tipping over**

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**[chapter summary]**

After all, his teeth did scrape off a fair amount of her lipstick.

...what punchline?

**[notes]**

wow it's only just past midnight and yet i'm tired as fuck but on another note EXAMS ARE SO OVER AND I AM A VERY HAPPY, VERY FREE PERSON and my feet hurt from traipsing around town lol

(but yay here's an update anyway - this goes out to all you lovely readers, those who reviewed/faved/followed too) (and everyone who cheered me on during A level period ILY)

enjoy c:

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Getting up in the morning is a complete bitch when you have a hangover. The two of them lie there pathetically, imitating death: they're slumped on the couch next to each other's still form, deeply sunk into blissful unconsciousness, only the occasional grunt of pain or dull wave of nausea overtaking them.

Wakamatsu's the first one to crack his eyes open – it's a painful endeavour, seeing as they're crusted with sleep and dried tears and the flakes of Seo's makeup where she'd brushed her lips over the shells of his eyelids last night, likely while he was passed out on the couch and she was still halfway through the process of getting drunk on good whiskey in front of Saturday special soap operas. He'd fluttered his eyes open, unfocused and glassy and swimming with colour so much that she'd looked at him and smiled hazily without helping it. He liked the curve of her mouth, but the wailing and the saturated colour of that goddamn rectangle on the wall was hurting his brain dangerously, so he'd blacked out again soon after.

"I can shing better an 'at," she'd slurred at the television, and that was the extent of all that he could remember of whatever transpired between his shitty dancing and downing tequila at the bar to waking up right this minute.

His mouth feels like it got pissed in by a donkey, and running his tongue over his gums yields confirmation of the fact that there is some kind of inedible substance smeared across his front teeth. He tries to rub it off on his shirtsleeve – red. Oh hey, maybe he tried to eat her lipstick or something. _Just how drunk did he get?_

Wakamatsu makes a valiant attempt to stand up next, and immediately proceeds to add that to the list of stupid things he's done in his life (nowhere near as stupid as entry number one, of course, but still). His head is throbbing so bad it feels like his heart has somehow migrated from ribcage to cranium and is steadily pulsating away there, and he couldn't possibly be more parched than if he'd spent a couple weeks in a desert under the shade of a cactus. His height isn't really helping with the vertigo either, and his hand-eye coordination totally fails him as he tries to grab some stabilising prop and lower himself back onto the couch. His head ends up crashing into Seo's lap, and he doesn't have time to be embarrassed about resting on her thighs before her hand kind of half falls into his mouth.

He rolls onto the floor and tries to go back to sleep.

Sure, he's so dehydrated it's insane, and he's definitely going to get hungry sometime soon, and he couldn't be more thankful that it's Saturday so he doesn't have to pry himself off the ground and stagger to work, but he got his date with Seo. The sappy smile rises unbidden, of its own accord.

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Next Friday night had rolled round and she'd dragged him out as duly promised so he could get hammered and loosen up. In theory, it shouldn't have been too difficult an experience for him – the life of any average office worker would have involved copious amounts of drinking, so going out and getting stuffed with beer ought to have been something he could handle with equanimity.

Alas, it was not to be.

Perhaps because what he got stuffed with was neither beer nor sake. As mentioned earlier, it was tequila. Blame it on the shot glasses, blame it on the lime – blame it on the wanting to prove something to himself, to Seo as well.

After knocking back about three in quick succession Wakamatsu's head had been buzzing more than pleasantly, but he could still walk fairly straight, only the slightest double vision threatening to hamper his sight. It had actually rather enhanced the whole experience, with the bright neon lights dragging out their comet tails in pretty duplicity, making him feel more in control than he really was. Not that control really mattered when you were on the dance floor of a dingy club, packed to the rafters with a hundred other drunken young people, pressed close and moving slow against another warm, supple body to music with hypnotic, rhythmic beat. He'd alternated his dances with the single shots of tequila, drink staying constant through the increasingly blurry whirl of changing dance partners – all tight black dresses and iron-curled hair artfully draped over one shoulder – that he couldn't pay attention to, until the dark emerald silk had stumbled back into his arms and he anchored himself to the unearthly glow of her amber eyes as she hauled him over to a corner.

"Alright," she'd said, pushing him down onto a low chair and perching on the armrest, hand gripping his shoulder a little too firmly. "Just how drunk are you, buddy?"

He'd meant to say "_not too drunk to dance with you one more time_", but all that issued from his mouth as he tried to form the words was a garbled mess. Gestures didn't exactly come in handy either, since his optical neurons and cranial nerve transmitters were pulling a fast one on him, so he really had no idea what he thought he was doing or what he actually did. It was probably some tragically bad attempt to grab her hands and stand up and smile in the direction of the dance floor or something, because Seo pulled a face and then started poking at his voice box, needling his Adam's apple.

He'd warbled fuzzily a little more, and she'd half-laughed, half-sighed. "Ah, see, you can't even say _Seo-senpai, please leave me alone_," she drawled (Seo was definitely only in the 'pleasantly buzzed' stage of getting drunk), jabbing at his collarbone too for good measure. "How many shots did you have?"

In answer, Wakamatsu had hiccupped gently and started to weave from side to side. She snorted in exasperation.

"Guess I'll have to ask the bartender, huh."

Leaving him alone for even the short amount of time it took to walk to the bar and pay for all their drinks was kind of a mistake, and she'd walked back to find him crouched against the wall, puking into some decorative artificial plant's wide-rimmed pot. He got a kick in the backside for that, because pulling someone who's just vomited into a headlock is something only an equally stone drunk person would do, and Seo is most certainly not stone drunk. Not yet, at least.

She wipes his mouth off with a couple of the plastic leaves and then heaves him to his feet, half his considerably tall frame draped across her shoulders. It's a fucking good thing that he's lanky and not bulky, or she'd have literally rolled him out the exit and onto the curb to flag down a cab. It was pretty fun to shove him into the backseat, to push and watch his long legs and long torso slide gracelessly further into the dark interior and spicy smell of air freshener (though it probably would have been way funnier if she'd been more smashed). With that in mind, Seo had remembered to tell the cab driver to hold on for a moment while she went back in to get something. They'd driven off with Wakamatsu's ankles neatly crossed on the quilted leather, next to her arm, and a bottle of neat whiskey cradled in her lap.

They'd had a little accident on the stairs, for which the lift was to be blamed, since it chose tonight of all night to break down and require servicing, the fucking piece of shit. She'd grumbled, and not good-naturedly, under her breath as she lurched up the steps, the distance between each landing made cruelly far by the slant of the moonlight, the lamplight and his breath on the crown of her head. It had dislodged strands of hair that tickled her temples and fell in her eyes, and she'd tripped; had swung him around easily to avoid smashing his skull into the concrete. They'd ended up in a half-crouch of sorts on the stairs, the bottle of whiskey still miraculously intact (though she'd probably have killed him if it had broken) and her unsteadied breaths mixing with his deeper ones. And looking down to check on her precious alcohol was all it had taken: for her grip to shift and allow him to slump forward, for his face to fall onto hers. It might have been comical if they didn't have things like Inhibitions and History, with respective capital letters.

After all, his teeth did scrape off a fair amount of her lipstick. _What punchline?_

Seo had given up for a while and sprawled out on the stairs, let her head loll back, before getting to her feet with renewed determination so she could reach his apartment and proceed to get smashed herself. On his couch, while watching crappy Saturday soap operas as she waited for the B-grade sci-fi flick time slot. She couldn't really decide if the experience was an overall enjoyable one, but one thing for sure – Wakamatsu was a pretty cute drunk.

High praise, even if she said so herself, since this was the same guy who'd blown her off years ago with an unforgettably public outburst. The last barely coherent thought she had was that she didn't know who, between the two of them, was giving who the second chance.

/

* * *

><p>

"Fifteen shots," a slightly slurry voice mumbles.

This is the first sign Wakamatsu has that Seo's awake. He's surprised (and a little envious) that she can actually speak coherently on the first try, pounding headache and parched throat be damned. He's still lying on the floor and her disembodied voice floats down to him from up on the couch where she'd slumped, both of them still wearing yesterday's clothes. There's a slight rustling and dark green screens his eyes from the sun for a moment, before the added weight on his chest alerts him to the fact that Seo has just propped her feet there, heels, digging into his sternum. He curls careful fingers around her ankles and shifts her feet so the soles rest flat on his front instead; movements still sluggish from the debilitating hangover he's managed to obtain. He dimly remembers that she's just said something, though he can't for the life of him recall what.

"Wha…wha'd you say…?" he croaks, weakly trying to muster up enough saliva to swallow and then hopefully soothe his throat. No such luck, though, and the reason why becomes apparent when she does deign to repeat herself.

"Fifteen shots," Seo hums, enunciating with some effort so he can hear her better. "You had – fifteen shots'a tequilaaa."

He doesn't want to think about it.

/

* * *

><p>

Hangovers are all about the dehydration, and dehydration is all about the feeling horrible, though in the past perhaps the only times when Seo felt dehydrated was Basketball club, and back then it certainly didn't feel horrible. This is new. The lack of fluids in her body is definitely taking its toll; she feels light headed beyond belief, and the slightest bit of motion requires an intense amount of coordination while still making her head spin. What she'd like the most right now would be to lie back down and somehow pass out again to block out the pain, but that isn't going to happen anytime soon. There's nothing for it.

"Hey," Seo says out of the blue. "I feel stupid."

And she does, she really does. When she told Wakamatsu that they'd be going out drinking, she wonders what she was honestly expecting to happen. Hoping the alcohol would kick start something? Perhaps, perhaps not. In any case, having splitting headaches and wanting to engage in some serious introspection is a match made in hell, so Seo will have to save the examination of her motives for another time, another clear-headed day. What does she even normally save her sobriety for? Her songs, most likely, but she's generally been neglecting them lately. Excuses, excuses.

Seo grits her teeth against the nausea and levers herself onto her stomach, stretching out on the sofa cushions, folding her arms under her chin, tilting her head to the side to stare down at Wakamatsu's face. He blinks his eyes over to her, looking paler than usual, and his skin has a slightly pasty look that she frowns over along with the dark circles under his eyes. She probably looks just as bad. Seems like cute drunks are ugly when hung over, hell, the world is ugly when hung over.

"You know," she begins again, still speaking sluggishly to ward off the dull pain, "maybe if I kiss you – maybe if I kiss you I'll feel less stupid."

In his current state of mind, it takes Wakamatsu more time than usual to register what she says, especially the word 'kiss' – his response to the suggestion is terribly delayed in itself, and therefore the delayed gratification of seeing his delayed flush means that it is diminished somehow. Seo inches forward on her elbows, the irritation building up in her barely overriding the renewed surge of light headedness that arises to assault her senses. _Fuck. _But she really wants to try that kiss. Even Wakamatsu bears with the head spinning and urge to throw up, grimacing as he props an elbow behind him to lean up and meet her lips halfway.

There is clumsy fumbling and the collision of noses, the sort that results from both of them being terribly hung over and not in full possession of any measure of advanced coordination between body parts or functions like eyes and hands and the regulation of breathing – though perhaps they might imagine that it resulted from teenage ineptitude and undue anxiety from the mere thought of kissing each other, somewhere in the back of their hazy consciousness.

The eventual meeting of chapped lips is fairly decent, as far as alcohol-induced kisses go. After they manage to avoid bumping noses, it ends up being more a gentle pressing against each other's lips, movements slow and languorous, hands anchored on the couch; breaths of air interspersed with multiple light pecks, until Seo emits a long sigh and Wakamatsu gingerly pulls away.

"Well?" he queries, peering up at her with mild curiosity. _His eyes are too blue_, is all she can think. The plan has obviously backfired on her.

"Nope, I only feel more stupid," she says, shifting slowly so she's now lying on her side, curled up slightly and facing the back of the sofa. Her hair falls over the back of her head but Wakamatsu can still see that Seo's nape, and the dent between her shoulder blades, is outlined neatly by the dark green of her dress and the honeyed threads in her hair. If it wouldn't set him back by about four hours in terms of recovery time, he'd have lifted an arm and stroked the back of her neck, no question about it.

"Oh." He barely remembers to respond, but it isn't really important anymore.

They lay back on couch and floor respectively, groggy and nursing massive headaches that sit on the tops of their heads like gargoyles, scowling, heavy as solid stone. Again, Seo's the one to break the silence, and she tries not to find it strange.

"If we're going to fuck," she whispers, "we should fuck only when we're sober."

"Yeah, totally," he agrees, because there's no other way to respond appropriately. Wakamatsu's always been quite particular about being appropriate, for the most part. The silence is only comfortable now because they're both too plagued by the hang overs to pay any regard to the sexual tension just generated, and it stretches on for a while more until Seo opens her mouth to speak once more.

"Hey," she breathes lowly, "You aren't even trying to talk much. I thought you hated being ignored?"

He smiles wanly, the barest upward quirk of his lips that she doesn't see, her back still facing him as they are. It's a secret sort of smile. "You aren't ignoring me," he points out matter-of-factly, voice raw from his throat's dryness, from the period of disuse. "And I'm hungry. Are you hungry?"

"Yep," Seo groans. "But I ain't moving from here anytime soon."

"I'll go shower first," he offers, trying to figure out a way to get his clothes and into the bathroom with minimal exertion. Or maybe they could both just lay here and rot till the end of time, and then maybe the weight in his chest would be lifted, miraculously or otherwise.

/

* * *

><p>

Wakamatsu hurriedly switches the heater off, and slides back down to the tiled flooring of the shower area as the water temperature gradually flickers from hot to lukewarm to chilly, and runs his hands down over his burning face. Whatever possessed him to start stroking his shaft while hotly mouthing Seo's name (and not just her name, her _first_ name?) of all things, he doesn't think he ought to entertain it a moment longer, because such thought don't deserve to have a place in his mind, or his heart.

Outside, in the living room where she lays alone on the couch, Seo quietly slips a hand under the folds of her dress; rocks gently into it.

/

* * *

><p>

"Brunch?" he asks her when she steps out of the bathroom, and the clock hands indicate it's already twelve.

She bobs her head in agreement, "Brunch."

/

* * *

><p>

**[notes]**

oh yeah.

smut is a pain in the ass (not literally) to write so I'm cutting that out - not that there won't be any suggestive bits, just that i'll make it so there's way more implication than description when it comes to sexual scenes.

fear not there will be UST galore because I like tormenting them that way

(Also because this fic is T and I don't want to have to make it M, or somehow get hate rated and have the story removed)


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